Night Watch: TEHRAN – As an indication of the seriousness in Russia/Iran relations a senior Russian foreign policy delegation has arrived in Tehran Sunday night to confront Iranian officials on regional-international issues – wars and especially on Russian equipment for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear facility still undelivered. PressTV reports the delegation is headed by the Secretary of Russia National Security Council Valentin Sobolev and he is scheduled to meet Monday the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili and other Iranian government officials. [PRESSTV]

Astara – I suspect the meeting will be more of a confrontation and not only because of the intense Moscow/Tehran rivalry over control of the resources in the Caucasus but especially due to the unresolved issue of the still non-functional Bushehr nuclear facility on the Persian Gulf which Tehran contracted Russia to build in 1995. Russian equipment for the facility has been held up on the Azerbaijan/Iran border since March 29 and Xinhua reports Tehran is pressuring Baku to release the cargo of Russian heat insulators “urgently”. Apparently the delay is being caused by Azerbaijan border and custom officers but Sobolev will probably inform the Iranian officials Baku is acting on instructions from Moscow which does not want to see an increase in the number of nuclear production facilities in Iran. Sobolev will probably say Iran has enough warheads already. This is why the projections Moscow/Tehran makes concerning the completion of Bushehr are always in conflict. Moscow is acting with the support of industrial concerns in the West, led by Berlin, which have long used Russia to control the region for the exporting of oil and gas. [XINHUA]

Damascus – Debka is reporting while Iran works on nuclear bombs it was Tehran’s intention for Syria to increase its production of unconventional weapons-chemical and biological. And that the military site the Israel Air Force destroyed on Sept. 6, 2007 was a North Korean built nuclear facility, financed by Tehran, for plutonium to produce radiological bombs to be set off by Islamic groups inside a major city in Israel. Syria already possesses Sucd-C and Scud-D ballistic missiles with chemical-biological warheads but a release of one radiological bomb in Haifa or Tel Aviv would threaten the existence of Israel. [DEBKA]

Bekaa Valley – Tehran is continuing to have the vast majority of Hezbollah’s 20,000 members trained in conventional warfare as quickly as possible and in absolute secrecy. The Jerusalem Post reports the British paper The Observer mentioned, quoting an international official, villages in the south of Lebanon are “empty of men…they are all gone, training in the Bekaa Valley, Syria and Iran.” The Bekaa is in Lebanon’s northeast on the Syria border and it seems the training in Iran concentrates on engaging tanks. A Lebanese army commander said the idea seems to be to prevent Israeli armored columns from reaching the flat plains of the Bekaa Valley where tanks would have the advantage. If Israeli tanks were able to do so it would give them another angle of attack against Syria. [JPOST]

Cairo – There are more indications Hamas and the main Egyptian opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood are working together against the administration of Egypt President Hosni Mubarak. The Jerusalem Post/AP report two members of the Brotherhood, Abdel-Hai al-Faramawy and Muhammad Wahdan have been arrested along with two Sinai Bedouins and a Palestinian Hamas member on charges they were planning to use unmanned aircraft to attack targets at least in Egypt. That could of course mean the Rafah Terminal but according to media reports everyone from U. S. and Israeli interests would be attacked and rival Palestinian groups like Fatah. The Bedouins were paid the equivalent of $3,600 for the purchase of 30 large cans of fuel, spare parts and a remote control unit. [JPOST]

Willard Payne is an international affairs analyst who specializes in International Relations. A graduate of Western Illinois University with a concentration in East-West Trade and East-West Industrial Cooperation, he has been providing incisive analysis to NewsBlaze. He is the author of Imagery: The Day Before.